


Someday Soon (I'll See You)

by could-be-calliope (206265)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, Safe house fic, had to write something soft before jonny breaks my heart with season 5, i mean allegedly soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:14:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23230759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/206265/pseuds/could-be-calliope
Summary: It doesn't make sense to talk to someone who can't hear him, and Jon knows this.Still, it's awfully quiet in the safe house.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 2
Kudos: 41





	Someday Soon (I'll See You)

**Author's Note:**

> I know there are a lot of safehouse fics, but I haven't seen one do it quite like this, so I thought what the hell and started writing.
> 
> Title from Mary by Big Thief.

Jonathan Sims was entertaining a hypothetical.

It wasn’t a particularly extraordinary hypothetical, but Jon entertained it all the same. In his mind, Jon wouldn’t have to count ten careful breaths before knocking on the bedroom door. His hand wouldn’t shake as he offered a cup of tea, made just right, and his voice would hold steady and warm as he asked his ex-assistant how he was feeling today. Martin would smile up at him, not the nervous flickering thing Jon had seen so many times, but a good smile. A smile that said they might just be okay.

Instead, Martin slept.

Jon didn’t need to see this to know it, but he didn’t dare trust the Eye with something so important. Logically, he took to hourly check-ins, just to make sure Martin’s condition was holding steady. Tap quietly on the door, force down the instinctive pang of worry when there was no response, ease into the bedroom where Martin lay. No more than five minutes of looking, measured precisely by the sunshine yellow clock hanging on the wall, then back to the living room with the door closed behind. It was just to ensure nothing went wrong, he told himself, which was perfectly reasonable. And if the sight of Martin’s sleeping form brought a soothing wave of relief over the tension that usually dwelt in Jon’s chest, that was entirely inconsequential.

What Jon found harder to justify, though, was the talking.

It happened on the fourth day, when Martin was sound asleep in bed and had been for at least twelve hours. Jon had already asked before entering the room, which earned only silence in response and rendered any further speech one-sided and decidedly pointless. He knew Martin wouldn’t respond to a soft voice, though rapidly-halted experimentation had proved that a shout could jolt him into awareness (though this would make his eyes flash wide and frightened– intolerable). Jon had determined to keep quiet, unless he had a statement to read, and it had been going perfectly well for the first few days.

“It was worse– with you gone, I didn’t– it was harder.”

Jon’s eyes narrowed as the rebellious words slipped out, without warning and without hesitation. He discarded the childish urge to slap a hand over his offending mouth, and instead clamped his jaw shut as he finished placing Martin’s tea on the bedside table. A little sloshed over the brim in his haste, and the scalding touch on his already burned hand felt like a reminder. Jon very carefully did not make a sound until he was safely out of the room, door closed to keep the noise away. Only when he was stood over the sink, numbing cold water coursing over his scarred skin, did he allow a whimper past his gritted teeth.

In retrospect, of course, it made sense. Jon’s job had consisted largely of speaking to an empty room (except for the Eye, never alone with the weight of the Eye looming overhead) for several years now, so why was this any different? Martin wouldn’t hear a single word he said, it should have been as if no one was there. The equivalence rang false even in the so-called privacy of Jon’s mind. He directed an extra bit of vitriol toward the Eye. The Eye, unsurprisingly, did not respond.

~

And so time stretched on. Jon awoke the next morning feeling blessedly normal, the absurd urge to speak to someone who couldn’t hear him markedly absent. Now that he was marginally more rested, the worry that had him fleeing Martin’s presence had vanished entirely. For all its horrors, the Eye had never forced him to speak, after all. He felt even better after a meagre breakfast of buttered toast and a brief statement regarding a distant encounter with the Hunt. Martin’s breakfast was significantly nicer, consisting of a somewhat lopsided omelette that Jon had struggled with far more than he’d care to admit.

Jon always took that handful of slow breaths before entering the bedroom. It was an opportunity to settle the knot of fear in his gut before it marred the most important part of his day. Because seeing Martin, as one-sided as their interactions had become, required a steady hand and a calm Jon rarely managed. He finished his ten-count and pushed open the door.

Martin lay curled on his side, a change from last night’s check-in, and breathed so slowly it was nearly imperceptible. The stillness was disconcerting, when Martin so often was surrounded by a nervous energy that kept him fidgeting. Before the sight could overwhelm him, Jon stepped into the room and set the tray down. As was his custom now, he reached out to lay a hand on Martin’s arm, sucking in a deep breath at the reassuring solidity of him. Even after several days, he couldn’t shake the fear that he might just reach out and find empty space where Martin used to be. His hands recalled the hollowness that lingered beneath Martin’s skin in the Lonely, and trembled slightly. Pushing aside the reverie, Jon squeezed gently and allowed habit to take over.

“Good morning, Martin.”

By now, Martin had shifted, a tiny wrinkle forming between his eyebrows as his expression changed minutely. Jon had the sight memorized.

“That’s it,” Jon murmured, and Martin’s eyes blinked open.

There was a flicker of recognition, buffeted on both sides by a long moment of blankness, but it was there. Jon tried to make what passed for eye contact these days, but any awareness rapidly slipped beneath the surface of that awful nothingness. Now, with any trace of Martin Blackwood once again absent from those bleached eyes, Jon found it surprisingly easy to pretend he was caring for someone else entirely. It was someone else he carefully propped up in bed, someone else he coaxed upright for a stroll about the cottage and nudged into some semblance of a daily routine. He’d done enough of this as his grandmother aged, teetering her way toward an early death by lung cancer. Still, his grandmother had never been so eerily quiet.

And herein lay the problem. It was true, Martin’s flashes of awareness were stretching longer and longer, each time fanning the glow of hope in Jon’s chest. But between the silence of sleep and the dreamlike trance that blanketed his few waking hours, Martin didn’t speak. So, in the fuzzy comfort of the safe house, Jon began to.


End file.
